Ben holds up his hand to an elder withered to the perfection you’d expect to pay for in these parts, an Injun standing amid the throng, holding up and open his palm. In his other hand, he holds a miniature totem, topped with a scrap of plywood nailed, on which is scrawled an
How, says the elder.
How what? He asks, thinking why not.
Howdy, he says, digging his totem into the ice and the dirt — donations are welcome, deal white with me, will you? He stands silent and straight and in-expressive as if a totem himself.
Ben forces on the elder a laugh, and he loosens up, pities with piety, waves Him over to meet his young squaw: a starved shy but pregnant girl, a refugee from the Navajo who despite their reputation for resistance, for violent survival, have all been already converted, he tells Him; then has Ben help shoe his horse while he — what else to do, not enough food — starts in with the nails on his kinder. If nothing else, he has a sense of humor. Not taking no, he offers Ben the freedom of his camp: lets Him sleep in line that night, the line that doesn’t move, as if anyone’d expected it to, the night that doesn’t move either, only its lights, which sway in the wind, which braid, as if to candle themselves with the powerlines, and then fire — lets Him sleep in the stow of a wagon on a heap of rank hay come loose from its bales, flameready, flecked pestilent with dung, nested infestation, the hatched eggs of vermin and varmint; amid the sleeps of the elder’s family of six with they threaten at least two more on the way, how they tussle in there, maybe even three by the end of the week — until just like tomorrow next Friday arrives, night, and with it as always the beginning of Shabbos again and so they prate at preparing wherever they stand, turning around to face east and now the Blessed art Thou firewater of its holy store are located, if at all, in the exact opposite direction. They’ll turn west again when the sun sets the next night.
You’re not safe here, the elder says preparing Kiddush that eve over what they’ve scooped of the weathering melt steeped with the peels of grapes saved and stored. I know who you are. I’m not just a native, I follow the news. And it’s not just my family, I fear for you, too. He holds aloft a murky tin cup, and there’s silence because none of them have yet memorized the blessing, the bracha. Over the washing, done from the depths of wheelrut puddles and hoofsinks, but before the breaking of bread, two cold loaves of corn, he takes Ben aside and whispers to Him: after we make Shabbos, it’s best you be gone, then returns to his kinder (his shayna shanya kinder), promising them — when we get to the store, I’ll trade up for more wine.
Ben sets out from the axis, walking two days, wandering three days, four, traversing four lines, arms, roads, and their people, kith and kined worlds…ways that might all be the same way, as the days of repetition lead toward the closing: blockade; with the meal spilled upon the ice then the savory salt, and there’s only one road left open…this the hardestrocked road, winding a way past the touristed ruins, originals destroyed whether by earthquake, fire, raid, or by time itself a God and then like Him or it reborn, again resurrected if only for the fast, distracted worship of weekenders ingathered; then, up to the so described, you sold me majestic vale of Third Mesa — how the pamphlets and brochures and catalogs available for a nominal investment of faith say windswept, say mighty with height, the site of the invisible archway by which the spirits of the dead might enter this world, and then exit, taking leave in a deep fall forever into the grandest of cañons. At least it’s not so small that you’d miss it.
